Office environments have become less private. Speech generated from a talker in one part of the office often travels to a listener in another part of the office. The clearly heard speech often distracts the listener, potentially lowering the listener's productivity. This is especially problematic when the subject matter of the speech is sensitive, such as patient information or financial information.
The privacy problem in the workplace has only worsened with the trend in office environments for open spaces and increased density of workers. Many office environments shun traditional offices with four walls in favor of cubicles or conference rooms with glass walls. While these open spaces may facilitate interaction amongst coworkers, speech more easily travels leading to greater distraction and less privacy.
There have been attempts to combat the noise problem. The typical solution is to mask or cover-up the noise problem with “white” or “pink” noise. White noise is a random noise that contains an equal amount of energy per frequency band. Pink noise is noise having higher energy in the low frequencies. However, masking or covering-up the speech in the workplace is either ineffective (because the volume is too low) or overly distracting (because the volume must be very high to disrupt speech). Thus, the current solutions to solve the noise problem in the workplace are of limited effectiveness.